Sam Smith Shouldn't Be Called Non-Binary: Here's Why

He specifically said he doesn't have a title for his gender.

Sam Smith said he's "as much woman" as he is a man in a recent interview. While it's great that Sam felt comfortable opening up about his gender, he was clear that he doesn't have a title for exactly how he identifies — in fact, he used those exact words.

"I don't know what the title would be, but I feel just as much woman as I am man," he said to the Sunday Time. Yet after the interview was published, Refinery29 points out that many were quick to label Sam's gender identity, despite his clarity that he doesn't have a label for it.

"That would all be fine if he had ever actually said he identifies as non-binary," Kasandra Brabaw wrote for Refinery29 about publications saying Sam identifies as non-binary. "But Smith actually explicitly says in the interview that he isn't sure of what label he'd use for his gender identity. And if he's not ready to use a label, we should definitely not be forcing one on him."

This is exactly right. The thing is, what Sam described seems to align with identifying as non-binary. People who identify as non-binary exist outside the typical societal understanding of gender, and that can mean a lot of things. It could mean they don't feel like either a man or a woman, they feel like a blend of both, that they feel more identified with one gender depending on the day, or something else entirely.

"Non-binary gender is any gender that isn’t exclusively male or female. Non-binary people may feel some mix of both male and female, somewhere in between, or something completely different," Meredith R. Chapman, who is a psychiatrist at the Children’s Health GENECIS Program in Dallas, previously told Teen Vogue. "Other terms that are similar to 'non-binary' are gender-queer, gender expansive, gender nonconforming, and gender awesome."

All of that is great except Sam didn't identify himself that way. As Refinery29 points out, it's not OK to put a label on someone when they specifically said they don't have one that they feel comfortable with. Instead, we should just listen to what Sam is saying, and respect that.